


The Last Blues

by aurria



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, I'm Sorry, M/M, Suicide, Survivors Guilt, everyone dies, lots of death, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 00:55:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14124642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurria/pseuds/aurria
Summary: They had won but it had cost them so much.--Please read the tags to know what you're getting yourself into here.





	The Last Blues

The half glass of whiskey clinked against the polished wood of the bar counter as he set it down.  A deep sigh escaped his lips and the hand that was woven through his hair gripped tighter.  It really wasn’t fair.  He shouldn’t be sitting in this shit-hole bar in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere.  He had made a promise to continue on, to keep living.  But how could he do that when the only reason he had for living was gone?  How could he do that when everything he loved and everything that loved him was no longer within reach?

Life sucked.  The universe had a sick sense of humor.  After everything he had given to save the fucking thing, you’d think it’d at least be grateful and repay him by letting him be happy, but no, she’s fickle bitch.

It had to be some sick game that he was the only one left.

With a deep breath he sat up and downed the last of the whiskey in his glass. Slapping a ten down on the counter he slid of the chair and stumbled his way out of the dark bar.

His gaze lifted to gaze at the twinkling stars above him; a deep fury followed by an overwhelming sadness flowed through him.  It was a cruel reminder of everything he once loved and had come to despise.

Sniffing to fight back the lump that had formed in his throat he shuffled around the back of the building where his hover bike sat.  In hindsight, driving it was probably a death wish, but at this point he didn’t care, in fact he welcomed it with open arms.

The flight back to his shack in the middle of the Arizona desert was short and unfortunately without incident.  Landing behind his home and dusting himself off from the landing, he walked into the one room house and collapsed onto the couch that served as his bed where het let the sadness overtake him.  Sobs wracked his body, tears pooling on the fabric beneath his head.

War was never kind.

-

They had lost Shiro first.  After discovering that the Shiro they had on the ship with them was a clone of their leader they had searched far and wide to find him.  They found the ship responsible for Project Kuron, and subsequently Shiro’s lifeless body – tortured and experimented on until his body had nothing left to give.

They grieved of course, Keith probably the hardest and longest, but they had managed to move forward.  They all had grown closer after it.  They gave him a military funeral befitting his rank in the Garrison and an Altean ceremony, wherein his body, though lifeless, was to be preserved in the paladin coffins in the Castle of Lions.

That was definitely the beginning of his relationship with Lance.  His stability, his reminder to keep going, his best friend, the only person he every really, truly loved.

-

He shifted positions on his couch, pulling the navy blue blanket around his shoulders despite the heat of the desert that sat stifling in his shack, a miniscule comfort in his pain and loneliness.  His eyes stared at the wall across from him that still housed the map and drawings from when they had found the blue lion hidden away underground.  He didn’t know why he left it up.  It was a cruel reminder of all that he had and all that he’d lost.

-

Coran had been next, months later.  They were fighting a massive fleet of Galran rebels that had formed their own alliance against Lotor’s reign.  Another branch had showed up while the lions were busy and had beaten down on the castle until its particle barrier had fallen.  They had broken in and captured Coran, disabling the castle ship in the process before escaping.

While they had managed to defeat the original fleet, the victory had been especially hollow, indescribably so when they later received a transmission with the cold-blooded murder of Coran on screen.

After getting the ship back up and using the teleduv to get to a part of space where they would be safe, they grieved again.  Allura had been inconsolable for months.  Voltron was inactive, their presence minimal at best, one or two lions showing up when needed, the Coalition having to do most of the heavy lifting for a while.

Lance hadn’t taken it any better than Allura.  They had been close, Lance viewing the man as an uncle, an integral part of their space family.

Without Coran as an anchor they drifted.

Moral was low, lower than when they had lost Shiro for good.

The Voltron Alliance and Coalition had come together for the ceremony.  Though they had no body for a proper Altean burial, they had set up a memorial within the same room of the castle that housed Shiro’s body.

There had been no merriment in the weeks that followed, in fact, it had would be a very long time before any sort of party or celebration would happen for the Voltron team.

Matt had joined them on the castle if only to make sure it was not left unattended during fights once Voltron was back in action.

They never found the ship that had taken Coran.

-

The light from the moon filtered through the window behind him, the light glinting off a necklace that was hanging from one of the push pins on the map.  He couldn’t get rid of it; Lance had given it to him, after their first night together. It was a promise of long a future together.  The dark stone that hung from the tarnished silver chain mocked him now.

Keith pushed himself up from the couch, the blanket falling from his shoulders to crumple on the ground.  He ripped the necklace from the wall and walked back outside to his hover bike.  Climbing back on he took off through the desert, direction aimless and not caring.  The need to escape was overwhelming.

The glow of the city he inevitably flew over did nothing to help calm him.  He and Lance and almost made this city their home when they’d come back.  Keith had asked him why he didn’t want to go home to Havana to be with his family.  Lance had given him a melancholic smile and said that he wasn’t the same person he was when he left.  And that while he still loved being around his family for visits, he wouldn’t be able to be around them long term.

And Keith had understood that.  They were family, but they weren’t _family_.  And despite how much Lance loved them, they would never understand what he had gone through, _could_ never understand.

Keith took a sweeping turn back towards his shack in the desert when he came upon the Garrison headquarters.  Memories flooded his mind of easier days when his only worry was passing flight tests and watching Lance from the corner of his eye in the mess hall.

Making a sharp turn away from the Garrison he followed the same path they took on their escape when they had rescued Shiro that day.

-

Matt and Pidge had gone next; together, as befitting their promise to never be far from each other again.

They had found the last ship Haggar had been on.  The witch had abandoned it when, they assumed, she had joined another more discreet ship to continue her experimenting as the Galra were fracturing more. 

Despite Lotor having lit the flame at the Kral Zera he could not corral the Galran people to his cause.  Still considered an enemy of the race, a threat to their continued existence, he had taken refuge on the castle with the paladins.

When they had come across Haggar’s abandoned ship, Pidge and Matt had volunteered to infiltrate with a stealth mission. 

The Galra had gotten smarter.

As soon as Pidge had plugged into the mainframe of the computer system the ship had exploded.  No countdown, no warnings; just a massive explosion.

Keith still blamed himself of that one despite Lance telling him that there was no way it could have been prevented.

Another memorial, another coffin in the room.

The couldn’t form Voltron any more.

What hope did they have that they could end this war?

Haggar managed to rally the Galran people despite being Altean.  How she managed it after so much dissent among the people, Keith still didn’t know.  And he didn’t care.

-

His landing was rough, sight blurry from the tears in his eyes, as he came to a stop atop a cliff overlooking the gaping maw of a canyon.

He could end this torment.  He could.  He just had to jump.  No one was there to stop him.

He fell to his knees, a scream ripping from his throat, guttural, heart-wrenching.

He couldn’t take this any more.  He couldn’t keep his promise, it needed to end.

-

The thing about losing so many people close to you in a such a short time was that it made you reckless; more so than you could ever think possible.

They lost Hunk to recklessness.  His own recklessness.  But it was a recklessness that had won them the war.

Though he was not their only casualty that resulted from that win.

Lance blamed himself for not seeing his friend self-destructing, but Keith knew what that type of despair did to people.  He had felt it after the news of the Kerberos mission failure, had taken it out on Iverson, a recklessness resulting from such profound loss that you didn’t care about consequences.

Haggar had been watching them through Lotor.  In fact, Lotor had been on her side the whole time.  Played them all after finding out that she was his mother that he had so longed to have a relationship with.

Haggar had taken a risk and come directly to them to retrieve her son.  Hunk had crafted a bomb and had sacrificed himself in the explosion to end everything.

Without a clear leader again the Galra floundered, the Coalition successfully brought the 10 thousand year long war to a close; those that refused to make peace were taken into custody and placed in prisons scattered all around, the rest were integrated into societies on many different planets.

A yellow coffin joined the others in that room, again, empty.

They were free to go home.

Despair ultimately claimed Allura’s life in the weeks that followed.  Despite the many advances in medicine the Altean people had made, depression was still something that eluded them.

She had thanked them for everything they had done, for freeing the memory of her people and her planet.  She thanked them by taking them home before taking her own life, a golden coffin joining the others in the dark room.

The Castle of Lions, that last remaining piece of the Altean people, now sat in the same valley where the blue lion was found.  Protected from prying eyes by its own barriers and the Garrison command, Keith and Lance had been the only ones allowed to go in.

-

Keith climbed back on the hover bike and set off towards the castle.  He would finally be joining them.  Finally, truly going home.  He just hoped that when he saw Lance again that he could forgive him for not making good on his promise.

It was too hard.

-

It seems ironic really, that he would survive a war in infinite space only to succumb to the hands of a human.

They had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The movie theater had been full of people, Lance’s niece visiting them to go see a new Disney movie.  No one expected the man with the gun to show up, nor did they expect him to open fire on a building full of innocent people.

Keith hadn’t expected Lance to try to talk the man down.

Keith hadn’t expected to cradle Lance in his arms as he bled out form a gunshot to the chest.

Hadn’t expected that Lance would make him promise to keep going, to keep living.  That sad melancholic smile on his face again as his last words were a final “I love you, samurai.”

Another memorial.

Another damn coffin.

-

Keith walked through the door of the castle after the barrier dropped. He wandered through the halls of the once sparkling castle, once full of life.

Now all that was left was a deep seated sadness that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.  The lions had been locked in their bays, and gone still after landing on earth, eyes dark, and minds quiet.  They hadn’t moved since.

The doors to the memorial room opened slowly revealing six coffins and two memorial stones, one on either side of the room.  The red coffin was still open as he was the last living paladin.

But that would end today.  They would be together again soon.

He started at Allura’s coffin, brushing a layer of dust off her name plate.  He hadn’t come in to clean them in a while, not since Lance was brought here six months ago.

One by one he cleared the others until he got to the blue one.

After brushing the dust away he rested his forehead against it.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out through his tears.  “I couldn’t keep my promise after all.”

As he pulled the necklace from the pocket where he’d stuffed it earlier, he walked over to the final coffin.  He pressed a kiss to it before slipping it over his head.

“Just like falling asleep Kogane,” he whispered to himself as he activated the sealing mechanism on the coffin before climbing in and settling down.

One hand gripped the stone around his neck, a soft smile shifting onto his lips before the lid sealed shut.

-

-

-

As he followed the lit hallway he could hear music and laughter.  His pace increased the louder the sounds got.  As he walked through the bright doorway he saw, quite possibly, the best scene in the entire universe.

His family finally reunited.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this angst fest. I was inspired to write this by Fall Out Boy's song "Bishop's Knife Trick."  
> \--
> 
> In no way do I support suicide and if you feel like that is your only option remaining, please know that there are people that care about you and will help. If any thing, please contact your local suicide hotline and know that you can find help.


End file.
